Patients’ Experiences with and Attitudes towards a Diabetes Patient Web Portal

Abstract

ObjectiveA diabetes patient web portal allows patients to access their personal health record and may improve diabetes outcomes; however, patients’ adoption is slow. We aimed to get insight into patients’ experiences with a web portal to understand how the portal is being used, how patients perceive the content of the portal and to assess whether redesign of the portal might be needed.Materials and MethodsA survey among 1500 patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes with a login to a patient portal. Setting: 62 primary care practices and one outpatient hospital clinic, using a combined patient portal. We compared patients who requested a login but never used it or once (‘early quitters’) with patients who used it at least two times (‘persistent users’).Results632 patients (42.1%) returned the questionnaire. Their mean age was 59.7 years, 63.1% was male and 81.8% had type 2 diabetes. 413 (65.3%) people were persistent users and 34.7% early quitters. In the multivariable analysis, insulin use (OR2.07; 95%CI[1.18–3.62]), experiencing more frequently hyperglycemic episodes (OR1.30;95%CI[1.14–1.49]) and better diabetes knowledge (OR1.02, 95%CI[1.01–1.03]) do increase the odds of being a persistent user. Persistent users perceived the usefulness of the patient portal significantly more favorable. However, they also more decisively declared that the patient portal is not helpful in supporting life style changes. Early quitters felt significantly more items not applicable in their situation compared to persistent users. Both persistent users (69.8%) and early quitters (58.8%) would prefer a reminder function for scheduled visits. About 60% of both groups wanted information about medication and side-effects in their portal.ConclusionsThe diabetes patient web portal might be improved significantly by taking into account the patients’ experiences and attitudes. We propose creating separate portals for patients on insulin or not.

Mobile health solutions for the aging population: A systematic narrative analysis

“…59 Communication is identified as a common theme in six articles. 28,30,37,40,45,54 Diffusion also deals with social change, and mHealth applications involve social change and the acceptance of this modality of delivery of care to a specific elderly population. 58 Acceptance is mentioned three times as a facilitator 23,25,52 and three times as a barrier (misunderstood, rejected).…”

“…23,30,31,33,35,36,38,41,45,47,[49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59] Table 1 illustrates and rank orders the themes from analysis of the facilitators of adoption based on frequency of their occurrence in the literature.…”

“…Effective, outcomes, and communicative were mentioned in 6/60 occurrences (10%). 27,28,30,[37][38][39][40]45,46,48,53,[54][55][56]58 mHealth can change behaviour through feedback. It can mentally stimulate patients to delay the advance of dementia, improve triage decisions and arrangement of transportation through communication channels, increase self-efficacy augmenting existing interventions and thereby outcomes.…”

“…The outcomes theme included early diagnosis, mobile interventions to stimulate mental activity, encouraging a more active role of patients in their conditions, and increased medication and therapy adherence, and an enabler to detect falls. 27,39,45,46,56,58 Mobile technology can also serve as a tool of communication to augment existing modalities to provide real-time data and increase the level of communication between patient and provider. 28,30,37,40,45,54 Quality of life was mentioned in 5/60 occurrences (8%), and it encompassed observations that mobile technology can make life easier, convenient and more comfortable for the user.…”

Designing a portal to patient-centered care? Let�s start with the patient. A cross-sectional survey. (Preprint)

“…In contrast to other studies in this field, that often focus on a functional Patient Portal, we had to start from the very beginning since there was no functional Patient Portal available in Belgium at the time our survey was submitted. [37][38][39][40][41] In addition, the use of cultural probes and ideation techniques, frequently used in design and human computer interaction research, provides insights into the way people would like to interact with digital health data. It creates the opportunity to design a Patient Portal that takes into account the health information needs expressed by future users.…”